3

Nico

Nico was willing to admit the glasses might have been a bit much. He checked himself in the mirror, though. Decided to keep them. Fixed a stray lock of hair. Carefully mussed another. The slim button-up. The unadorned cardigan. Plain navy trousers that even Emery would have been proud of (or, at least, satisfied with). He looked like a responsible, respectable grad student.

You look like a nerd, said a voice remarkably like Marco’s. Show them tiddies!

True, he did look a little…basic. A little…boring, maybe. The glasses swallowed up his whole face. For a moment, his hand hovered over his placket, as he considered the fourth outfit change of the day. And then Nico stopped. He would not show them tiddies, not when he was busy building a career for himself. He double-checked the buttons to be sure. He took an extra moment to pick yesterday’s clothes up from the floor (he’d been working on that, among other things), and promised himself, next time, he wouldn’t leave them on the floor at all.

By the time he got out of Harlow Hall, it was after eight, which meant he ran across campus. The morning was bright, the sky clear, ivy flaming across the old limestone walls. His breath clouded in the frosty morning air and caught the light and blazed white. Emery might have been on to something; the cardigan definitely wasn’t heavy enough for this morning.

With fall break in full swing, the campus was quieter than it ought to have been. Nico passed an old white guy bundled up in a parka, his bald head gleaming and then snuffing out as he walked a little terrier from sunlight to shadow to sunlight again. A wiry Indian grad student jogged past Nico in the opposite direction and gave him double thumbs up. A pair of thirtysomething women in business casual emerged from the student union building, one of them laughing so hard she had to hang on to the door to stay upright while the other simultaneously laughed with her and tried to shush her. Professional, Nico thought, and he adjusted his glasses as he slipped through the still-open door and into the union.

Waverley Center was warm, thank God, and like the rest of campus, it had a kind of dark-timbered, iron-fixtured gravity that made it hard to imagine undergrads filling the space. The warmth fogged his glasses for the first few seconds—that was new—and Nico wiped them on his cardigan as he did a quick scan.

“Can I help you, sir?”

The voice belonged to a Hispanic guy who, in spite of the lingering baby fat in his face, was a certified hunk of meat in a security guard’s uniform. His hair was buzzed, his mouth hard in a way that made you think things, and his tawny eyes were frank and assessing. Right then, they were assessing Nico, and Nico had been on that end of the camera long enough to have an idea what this guy—whose name tag said Heeley—was thinking.

And that was most definitely, most certainly, not why Nico had come to this seminar.

“I’m good,” Nico said. He held up the glasses, as though that explained anything.

Heeley’s hard mouth cracked at one corner—not a smile, but something even more interesting. Tawny eyes flicked up and down. “Can I help you find something?”

Well, Nico thought, if that wasn’t an opening, he didn’t know one.

“I’m good,” Nico said again. He strode off into the union, pretending he hadn’t seen the way the corner of Heeley’s mouth twitched, pretending he couldn’t feel Heeley’s eyes following him.

It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for—the stream of people, more than he would have expected during the campus’s fall break, led him straight to the coffee shop. A long room, complete with vaulted ceiling and oil paintings, more in line with a Harry Potter-style banquet hall than anything else, served as a coffee shop, and it was surprisingly busy. Nico got in line behind a muscularly built man, put his glasses back on, and scanned the menu.

His basic bitch mode activated almost immediately: pumpkin medley latte.

They couldn’t call it a pumpkin spice latte. Or maybe they didn’t want to. It was one way to be different from all the bougie white ladies with their seasonal Starbucks cups. But they could call it whatever they wanted; it didn’t make any difference to Nico.

More men queued behind Nico. Big guys. Muscular. And then a single Latina who Nico would have bet his left nut was a lesbian. Something ticked in the back of his head. He gave the room another long look. A lot of beefy guys in polos and khakis—business white dude’s equivalent of an invisibility cloak. Not much talking. Even the ones sitting in pairs were looking at their phones. But Nico had spent enough time around cops—around one cop in particular—to recognize the breed.

When he turned back, the man in front of him was holding a boxed cinnamon roll, studying it. Then he looked at Nico. He was shorter than Nico, his skin a deep brown, and he had strong features set in a wide face—a wide nose, a wide mouth, a wide jaw. He had to be a cop too, and the way he held himself, the thick hands, the strong fingers, gave him an unexpected air of roughness, somewhere on the scale between boyish and thuggish. Then he smiled, revealing the deep tear troughs under his eyes, and Nico inched him toward boyish. Trouble, but definitely boyish.

“This is way too big for one person,” he said, displaying the cinnamon roll.

Nico made a noncommittal noise.

The man’s smile got bigger. “Okay, that was weak.”

Nico raised his eyebrows.

“How’s your morning going?” the man asked.

“How’s my morning going?”

It only made his smile get bigger. “Come on, that was polite.”

“The line is moving.”

The man shuffled backward, still keeping an eye on Nico. “You’re not going to make this easy on me, are you?”

“You’re definitely not making it easy on yourself.”

“Vic,” he said and held out his hand.

“Hello, Vic,” Nico said. “It’s your turn to order.”

Vic gave him a final, appraising look. Then his grin flashed to a hundred. “Could I buy you a coffee?”

“No, thank you.”

“Sir?” the barista asked.

Vic shrugged. “Can’t blame me for trying. Have a nice day.”

He ordered, and then he moved down to the pickup area with a parting wave for Nico. Nico placed his order next (ignoring the face the barista made when he asked for the latte at kid temp). He snuck a look at Vic, who was playing on his phone now. He was a nice-looking guy. More attractive than handsome, but confident and polite. He’d taken the losses with good humor. Hell, he’d wanted to split a cinnamon roll, and most of the guys interested in Nico thought he should be living on air and water to keep himself thin. Would it be so bad to have coffee with a guy who was interested in him? Maybe—just maybe—to share a few bites of the cinnamon roll?

Yes, Nico decided. It would. Because the minute Nico let his guard down, Dr. Chapman would appear, or Dr. Young, or Dr. Meza, and they’d see him flirting and hanging out and wasting seminar time, and that would be the end of it.

He waited until Vic had collected his coffee before moving down to the pickup area.

By the time he got his pumpkin medley latte, it was almost eight-thirty. Nico hurried toward the exit. The security guard, Heeley, caught his eye. That was all, a look, but it was the kind you felt in your belly, and Nico had a hard time dragging his gaze away.

Which was why he didn’t see the man barreling through the doors until it was too late.

They crashed into each other. The paper coffee cup collapsed in Nico’s grip. Pumpkin medley latte (kid temp) fountained out. And then Nico’s head cracked against the other man’s, and they both went down.

He was still sorting himself when a familiar voice said, “Oh my God, I’m so sorry—Nico?”

Nico stared at the vaulted ceiling above him. Because maybe some sexual ley line had gotten crossed. Maybe a horny ghost was determined to mess up his life. Because this was, apparently, the theology seminar of potential hook-ups.

Including Detective Jadon Reck.

Jadon squatted next to Nico, peering down at him. As usual, he looked…well, perfect. Even in autumn, his coloring made Nico think of the beach: darkly sandy hair, darker eyebrows, even darker eyes. His white dress shirt, dripping with coffee, clung to his sculpted chest. It was, admittedly, a look. It didn’t seem fair that a detective should be handsome to the point of having perfect nipples.

“Are you okay?” Jadon reached down, hesitated, and then touched Nico’s head. Nico flinched. “You’ve got a goose egg,” Jadon told him with a small smile. He rubbed above his hairline. “I think I’ve got one to match.”

With Jadon’s help, Nico got to his feet. He did a quick check and was amazed to find that, aside from a few drops of coffee spattered on his button-up, he was unscathed—it would be easy enough to button the cardigan and hide the stains. Jadon, on the other hand, had taken the brunt of the coffee. Following Nico’s gaze, he plucked at the shirt and said, “It’s totally fine.”

“Jadon, oh my God.”

“It’s fine, I promise.”

“I ruined your shirt.”

“I didn’t even like this shirt. I hated the tag. You did me a favor.”

“You can cut out a tag, Jay. You’ll never get the coffee out of this.”

“Sir.” Heeley stepped into Nico’s peripheral vision. He didn’t look happy. “Are you all right? Should I call an ambulance?”

Jadon gave him a quick look and said, “We’re good here.”

Heeley didn’t like that; Nico could see it in his face. “Maybe you should sit down, sir.”

“I’m okay.” Nico even managed a smile. “Thanks.”

“I think—”

“Why don’t you radio for a cleanup?” Jadon said, nodding at the coffee. “You don’t want somebody to slip.”

Heeley’s jaw tightened at that, but after another long look at Nico, he stepped back and reached for his radio. Jadon guided Nico away from the spill. The feel of his hand on Nico’s arm—warm, solid, strong—shook Nico out of his daze.

This was Jadon.

Jadon was here.

And then it all came rushing back: that first, chance meeting at North and Shaw’s house; the first, awkward conversation; the way Jadon had looked in shorts and a tee—the lines of his arms, the muscled thighs, the way he spread his legs, his large, powerful body sprawled and at ease. And then months of texting, the short, flirty messages building into something more, the things Nico never said to anyone, the things, he thought, Jadon might not say to anyone else.

And then it had stopped.

No explanation. No answer. Nico’s final text left hanging there.

And Nico refused to make a fool out of himself.

He pulled his arm away from Jadon.

Jadon let his hand drop as though it had been his idea; he might not have even noticed because all his attention seemed to be on Nico as he asked, “What are you doing here?” And then, his voice dropping, “Are you in disguise?”

“Am I in disguise?”

Nico had to admit, as he heard himself, that his tone might have slipped a bit.

Some microcalculation took place on Jadon’s face, and he said, “Sorry, I—” Then he grinned, and it was like someone had flipped a switch, because he looked relaxed and—well, if Nico weren’t a total idiot, happy to see him. “What are you doing here?” And then, “I didn’t know you wore glasses.”

“I don’t, usually,” Nico said. Which was, technically, the truth. But he took the glasses off, folded them, and tucked them into a pocket of the cardigan. “And I’m here for a seminar.”

“You are?”

Nico stood a little straighter. “Believe it or not, Jadon, yes. I actually do go to seminars. They even let me present papers once in a while.”

“Uh, okay. I mean, I thought it was more of a police thing, but that’s great that they’re letting private investigators attend too.”

Nico stared at him.

“What?” Jadon finally asked.

“What are you talking about?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the theology seminar I’m attending this week. Here. At Chouteau College.”

Jadon’s smile grew. “Ah. I thought—there’s a symposium for LGBTQ law enforcement professionals. Well, you don’t have to be gay, but a lot of the attendees are.”

“That explains the sexual ley line,” Nico said under his breath.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

A group of men passed, suspending their conversation as they stared at Nico and Jadon—particularly at Jadon, in his coffee-soaked clothes.

“It’s not a fucking strip show,” Nico snapped. “Put your eyes back in your fucking heads.”

The men—more of the burly, police types—exchanged startled looks and walked a bit faster toward the exit.

When Nico turned back to Jadon, he was smiling.

“You’re here all week?” Jadon asked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Figured you were busy, like always.”

Jadon’s smile dropped.

“Don’t worry,” Nico added, “I won’t hold you to your promise.”

“Hold on—”

At that moment, Maya passed them. Nico called her name, and when she turned around, he jogged to catch up.